this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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With physical media those licenses didn't materially matter though because a contract you can't read until after a purchase is automatically void in court.
Copyright is automatically applied rather you want it or not. Licenses are granting you permissions to use the media without violating their Copyright. Having a physical copy simply means a publisher cant restrict access to your copy because they turned off their servers... (atleast before the age of zero day patches...).
Just FYI, you mean day zero patches. Zero days are something else entirely.
Actually the original meaning was the way I intended.
Using “updated” terms intending them as their original meaning is not usually the best plan… Like me saying “that’s an awful haircut” but using awful as the near synonym for awesome.
Which is why those license agreements generally had a clause that if you disagreed you could return the software with all the media for a full refund.
I’m not saying it’s the right way, just that’s how it’s been structured legally. Of course, in the days of physical media with software that couldn’t phone home it was harder to enforce those licenses if people didn’t strictly adhere to them. The software companies didn’t generally find it worth going after individuals if they found out about violations either. Corporations, on the other hand… I worked once at a media company that Adobe caught running a lot of unlicensed software. The story went that it was so bad at the main office their auditors found a copy of After Effects or something similarly ridiculous on a computer that was used as a cash register in the corporate cafeteria. That was very much worth Adobe’s time and money to get the lawyers involved, and became a very expensive problem for my employer. I wasn’t involved in the problem, but I had to check and clean my local office, where we found about a half-dozen computers with unlicensed software.
It makes no difference.
They're trying to impose an obligation or task on a customer after the purchase, even if it's only the customer having to go through the trouble of getting the refund (which is a task they were not informed about before the purchase).
If it's not before the sale it's void and even in some cases before the sale (for example bait and switch, were you're mislead with fake contract conditions until the last minute) it's void.
The whole point is that they must be clear upfront about any conditions attached when the customer is making the decision to buy and adding any conditions after the sale is not acceptable even if the seller gives options (such as refunds) because the customer has a right to use the product under the conditions at the time of the sale and cannot legally be forced otherwise, including forced to refund.